pointed to this passage in one of the Sporting Magazines:-"The Corsair has friends for the Leger! Euclid is safe to beat him, and Bloomsbury safe to beat Euclid;" as much as to say, "You see I had chapter and verse for my wager." Brother to Euclid and Launcelot were the pick of the younkers, and both have troops of friends for next year.

Our more legitimate quarry-the three-years old lot-comes next; and I cannot let it pass without a slap at one or two of the covey. The decoy bird was Bloomsbury; and a scarecrow he looked and proved. He was, beyond all doubt, beaten before he started-all wrong, and no mistake; but I do not desire to press this matter. Ridsdale has been badly used: or say, he has suffered bitterly. What is it to him that there was reason for the persecution he suffered? He lost his money, and his time, and his patience; and it is little consolation to him that the Stud Book was botched by Mr. Weatherby, of Oxendon-street, or Mr. Orton, of York. "Arcades ambo;" between them both, he fell into the hands of the Philistines; and finished off he unquestionably had been, if one "Joseph Gott," for whom, it was said, an experienced angler descended into Yorkshire, had been caught by the gill. . . . . What shall I say for Charles the Twelfth ?—That he ran a slashing nag for the Leger, there can be but one opinion, or of the truth and first-rate character of that race. Scott's riding for the decisive heat was a fine specimen of horsemanship-a combination of rare skill and judgment—a far different performance to that of his second heat for the Derby on the Colonel. There should be efficient people appointed to keep the door of the weighing-house: between the two heats for the Leger, a sinister-looking "tout" came in, and invited Connelly "to take a glass of brandy-and-water with him." Connelly knew nothing of the fellow, and dispatched him, of course, without his errand that it was an intended "plant," I believe. The old ones ran against all rule-Kremlin beat Cardinal Puff, and Lanercost, Bee's-wing, in weight for age races: au reste, things went off with spirit and discretion, and York was not wanting.

Newmarket is the last trysting of our eventful history, with its three Autumn Meetings: "There's luck in odd numbers," cried Rory O'More. It will be seen that I have passed from north to south, without pausing for the Liverpool Autumn Meeting. I have done so, because there is nothing very flattering to be said for that essay, and in the hope that the next anniversary may be more worthy its heritage. The Newmarket running was certainly full of interest. The race, for instance, between Euclid and Ether for the Grand Duke Michael set people musing about the late Doncaster event; and the style of Crucifix's winning the Hopeful, was considered conclusive of the Oaks, "barring accidents." Wardan, also, came out in force at the first October, while his fashion of winning the Fifty Pound Plate in the subsequent meeting, at Derby weights, was a performance that admitted of no question. Of the two Great Handicaps I do not care to speak, as I love not those conceits. What earthly interest, save with the betting people, can attach to a race, wherein the winner, a five-year-old, is weighted at six stone, while a fourth rate four-yearold, carries eight stone ten pounds! Let me turn from such idle

fancies, and close my notice of the season with a recapitulation of the performances of the most remarkable two-year-old in the annals of racing. The first favourite for the Oaks won the July and Chesterfield Stakes at Newmarket; the Lavant and Molecomb Stakes at Goodwood; the Hopeful, the Clearwell, and the Prendergast, at the first and second October; and divided the Criterion at the Houghton at Newmarket-making, in stakes, with one walk over, the net sum of £4,820! This did Crucifix, a filly, purchased, with her dam, for a fifty-pound note!

MY HORSES.

BY NIMROD.

ON referring to the fifty-third number of the ninth volume of the "New Sporting Magazine," the reader will find the above subject commenced under the head of "Horse Dealing." The article was well received amongst English readers; and as it was translated into German, I may justly conclude it met with the approbation of German amateurs of English horse-flesh. The cause of the subject not being pursued in the above-named periodical, was, the space allotted to my writings being occupied by a detail of my late Northern Tour; and thus has the MS. been lying in my desk until this time. Having experience for its base, some useful hints will be gathered from what it contains, and a few rather singular facts. For example-in the great number of horses that have passed through my stables, not one was ever returned on my hands; I only returned one as unsound, after having purchased him; neither have I ever had a wrangle, still less a quarrel, with any person, the origin of which was a horse. This I attribute to two causes: I generally gave prices which commanded sound horses; secondly, I never sold a horse as sound which I did not believe to be so.

As this history will not be complete unless it commences with the first horse I ever was master of; moreover, he being, perhaps, the most extraordinary one of them all; I am compelled to transcribe a part of his character from the paper that appeared in the "New Sporting Magazine," which is this:" He was the real Welch-mountain galloway, handed down to me by my elder brother when he was promoted to the back of a horse; of prodigious strength for his size, ergo, called Sampson--the perfect war-horse in miniature: having the crest of a stallion (which he was); the mane of a lion; a tail that would have done honour to Denmark; an eye redder than blood, when caught at a certain focus, and indicative of extreme vice; the action of a hackney, with the speed of a race-horse; and a temper composed of all the vices that degrade the character of the horse. He was originally presented, by the late Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, to Mr. Boycott, late master of the Albrighton foxhounds (when he was a boy), and by him given to my brother; so that, leaving myself out of the question, he may be said to have been the parent, practical instructor, of two most superior

horsemen, which Mr. Boycott and my brother are well known to be."

Here my quotation must cease; nevertheless, to support the character of "extraordinary," which I have given him, it will be necessary that I should detail a few more of the characteristics of the renowned Sampson-for renowned he was in the neighbourhood in which he was known. In the first place, no blacksmith could shoe him without casting him; and he broke the arm of one who attempted to shoe him at liberty :-secondly, no man, still less boy, could hold him when he had a mind to go. I saw him run away with a strong footman of my father's, giving him an awful fall; and I witnessed his doing the same thing by a brother of Mr. Boycott, fracturing his skull. I know not how many falls he gave me; but, strange to say, that, with all his vicious propensities, he once dragged me by the stirrup on the high road, and never offered to kick me. To conclude, I rode him a journey of 100 miles, starting with a straw in his tail, which straw almost every hostler on the road attempted to take out; but it was no go. "Don't touch that galloway," was the signal given by the servant, but oftentimes disregarded.

The following extract, also, from the first paper on this subject, must be allowed me, inasmuch as it tends to verify the proverb, of bringing up a child in the way in which he should go, &c. "Now, then," I say, I say, "arises a question rather difficult to speculate upon, because the only person who could have answered it has been many years in his grave. How happened it a father, so bent upon making scholars of his sons, as to dose them with books even to nauseawhich nausea stuck to them through life-should likewise have been determined that they should become horsemen, and, consequently, sportsmen, as was evident by his permitting them to ride so ungovernable and dangerous an animal as Sampson? Why, in fact, he was himself a horseman; and, although not a sportsman, he was an advocate for all manly sports, fox-hunting included, as a sight of myself upon Sampson, in my red coat and cap, leather breeches and boots, during several Christmas holidays-a parvus Iülus in his eyes, and by no means small beer in my own-would too plainly have indicated." Thus far, then, I have been a dutiful son; and, as regards Sampson, I have only to add, that he was supposed to have lived to his thirtieth year, and without having forgotten any of the vices he had exhibited.

My first purchase of what may be called a horse--a full description of which will be seen in the opening paper-was, I believe, one of the best I ever had; but another Sampson in disposition. It will be seen that, with the assistance of an old whipper-in of Mr. Loder, who then hunted the neighbourhood of Oxford, I partly broke his spirit; and, after his breaking his knees by a fall in plunging, I sold him for twenty-eight pounds to a clergyman in Warwickshire, who rode him ten seasons. Parson Venor's Hero (for such were the names of man and horse) was always in his place-his character being, that no fence was too high or too wide for him; no day too long.

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spectre

Strange to say, my next purchase-the well-known mare," ridden so many years by my brother-was another devil in a horse's hide, and another trump turned up. For two seasons she was dangerous in the extreme; but she afterwards steadied down into one of

the best hunters England ever saw; at least so thought the late Lord Charles Somerset-no bad judge of what a really good hunter should be. I gave twenty pounds for her just out of training, with a big leg, which I made still bigger by too severe blistering; but she stood sound, and through a score of years, although without bequeathing either her good or bad properties to posterity, inasmuch as she would not breed. I sold her for thirty pounds to my brother, having been first submitted to the inspection of a first-rate judge of horse-flesh, to satisfy my father she was worth the money! I do not now remember her pedigree, but she had Herod blood in it, and it ran back to Captain Appleyard's Bald Charlotte (A.D. 1721), the great grandam of Cockscomb and Dorimant, and herself a capital racer of her day.

My third purchase was at Oxford, a black mare; but, selling her to a London gentleman who did not hunt, I have only to remark that, although her colour was jet black, she had a ring of pure white, about an inch and a half broad, on one of her thighs, which gave her an odd appearance. From this mare, however, I took my first "wrinkle" as to the hard meat system, now become so general. Her owner rode her ten years, during which period she never was turned out to grass. I saw her at her death, and her flesh was as firm as marble.

My next purchase was an unlucky one. Hearing of a very large black gelding, got by North Star, to be sold, I went with thirty pounds in my pocket, whereas fifty pounds was his price. What was to be done? A well-timed Greek quotation, in a letter to my father, brought the other twenty pounds; the coach-horse looking animal became mine; and I thought I had got a prize, as he could take a very big jump. The fat, however, was soon in the fire; he tumbled down with me, and broke his knees; and two pages of Homer would not have fetched another twenty pounds out of the old gentleman's pocket for a like purpose; he being of opinion that no horse, except a racer, was worth more than thirty pounds. The further history of this horse, christened Black Sir Harry, is amusing; but, having already appeared, it must be omitted here. Suffice it to say, then, "the cloth" came again to my relief; he was purchased by a wealthy rector, and proved an excellent hunter at the pace he could go; but it was one that would not have distinguished him in a half-hour's burst from the Coplow.

There was living at this period, in the neighbourhood in which I was born, a truly worthy country squire, whom, in the eye of memory, I now see before me, taking his morning rides on a snug-looking, wellfed, quiet, brown mare, with a very neatly appointed groom close at her heels; and so timid did he appear, that I have good reason to believe a wide cart-rut would have bothered him. As for fox-hunting, the very idea of its dangers would have alarmed him; and as his neighbour of Erthig (the classical and witty Mr. Yorke) said of himself, he had "never even reached the hare." In fact, he was, on horseback, what is termed, a perfect old woman. All at once, however, the spirit moved him ;-call it excitement, call it inspiration, or by any name you choose the snug-looking brown mare was drafted; the stables of were filled with hunters, the best that money could purchase; and no man in the country rode so desperately hard as did this worthy old gentleman, then bordering on his grand climacMoreover than this, the passion for hunting was accompanied

teric.

by a mania for purchasing horses which he himself found very difficult to satisfy, but which his steward could have readily dispensed with; and it was in a string of sixteen (!), which he bought from a dealer on his road from Yorkshire, that Flying Jenny was imported into my father's neighbourhood, and, finally, into my vacant stall. I bought her for twenty pounds, at the sale of all this worthy gentleman's stud; his hunting career having been put an end to, in his third season, by a very lamentable occurrence. He got a violent fall, by leaping into a gravel-pit; and, having been bled by a farrier, who happened to be on the spot, and who bled him as he would have bled a horse, he never came to the scratch again.

One would imagine I dealt in parsons as well as in horses, for, again, the church stands my friend. The very name of Flying Jenny duly denotes that she was a capital jumper; but she had, in some persons' eyes, more desirable qualities. She had an excellent set of limbs, was pleasant and easy to sit upon; and, although ten minutes' "best pace" would have brought her to a dead stand still with hounds, she was a steady, good mare on the road. The worthy rector of Eccleston* then got me well out of this scrape. Coming to visit my father, he brought with him a very fine brown mare, worth half a dozen Flying Jennies, but she alarmed his reverence by now and then striking her leg under the knee, which is vulgarly called "speedy cutting." I, of course, descanted on the extreme danger of this failing, and particularly in horses that carried heavy weights; heightening my argument with the most appropriate figures of speech-such as "knocking their legs from under them"-" falling as if they were shot"-" not a moment's warning"-" pitching on their heads," &c., &c.; all of which the parson swallowed, as, indeed, most people do swallow; and a tail-to-tail bargain was the result. By a little attention, however, to the form of her shoes, in addition, perhaps, to a very favourable exchange of weight, this fine brown mare never struck her leg under me; and, as she was a charming animal to ride, as well as to look at, I sold her for seventy guineas. †

as

I know nothing now worthy of notice until I went to Ireland-not a sportsman, but as a soldier-in 1798, the fatal year of the Rebellion. When I state the fact, that we had in our regiment three officers, who had been masters of foxhounds, and one who has since been one, I need scarcely add, that it may claim the honour of having been not only a fighting, but a sporting regiment. The last year of our sojourning there, the country becoming tolerably quiet, and a few of the country gentlemen having returned to their seats, a little racing was now and then kicked up, an excellent private course being at hand. I was a bad hand at this. I made two matches, and was beaten in both. "This will not do," said I to a friend: "I must look for something better bred;" and we were not more than twenty miles distant from the Curragh, where racing was about to be revived, after several of the stables had been completely cleared of their contents by the rebels. But what did I purchase? Something that could run, or that had run? No, that would have been useless; I purchased something

The parish in which Eaton Hall (Marquis of Westminster's) stands.

I am one of those who think lightly of the speedy-cut. It arises from excess of action, and can always be either prevented or guarded against.